YouTube Adds Clips Feature In Alpha Testing

YouTube has announced it's rolling out a new feature: The ability to create short clips from a longer video. The announcement was made under the banner of its Live & Gaming departments, suggesting the company looks at this as a way to enhance its gameplay streaming and VOD community.

The feature is just in a limited alpha testing phase right now, among a small group of channels with access to the feature. Those tools are also only available on desktop and Android devices for the time being, and iOS devices are said to be coming soon. Content creators are not able to request access to this for their channels during the testing phase.

With clips, you can create a 5-60 second segment of anyone's content, and then share that clip. Content creators who have been given the ability to create clips will see a clip icon underneath a video, and once clipped it will play from the original video on loop. YouTube created a sample video to show off the feature in action, and it's inviting feedback via the replies or the standard report feedback form.

For game streamers in particular, the clips feature will allow creators or fans to quickly show off standout gameplay moments in longer videos. The functionality is similar to the current ability to mark a timestamp, though making it a clip and letting it loop differentiates it.

This also makes the functionality seem very similar to Twitch's own clips feature, which is YouTube's major competitor for game streaming.